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Let's create and celebrate a nation of diverse readers. For Read Across America, let's look at inclusive texts that share our nation's greatest quality - diversity and inclusivity.  
Are you a school librarian or teacher? Take and tweak the poster above for your needs.
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Poetry is empowering. It can show students how people express themselves, push them to consider their own identities, and inspire them to seek social change. It allows us to experience the thoughts, emotions, and experiences of others.
Black history has been both a subject and a muse for African American poets, who have lamented the foundational trauma of slavery and subsequent violence as they've celebrated the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, the election of the first Black president, and above all, the legacy of endurance, resistance, and grace of a culture that is central to American identity. Through our Black History Month Poetry Slam, we hope to honor that with poetry that examines this year’s theme of celebrating representation, identity, and diversity. I appreciate our youth poets who are stepping outside of their comfort zones to express themselves and their voices during this event. 
If you would like to learn more about Black History through poetry or are interested in writing your own:
Recently, at a statewide school librarian collaborative, I was asked how our school promotes ebooks/audiobooks and how we get our students to read them. It was such a layered question that I tried to answer with the time we had, but there is so much that goes into how our students are consistently the #1 in the district for ebook checkouts and time spent reading.
{Some background before you read on, our middle school is one school in a large metro Atlanta county that supports 58 elementary schools, 19 middle schools, 15 high schools, and 7 charter schools. Our district utilizes Sora for our ebooks and audiobooks.} Check out the ways we have promoted and made ebooks a part of our culture below. Instructional Collaborations
The number one way to quickly increase circulation and begin making digital reading a part of your school culture is teacher buy-in. Not all teachers believe that ebooks or audiobooks are considered real reading and it takes time to shift that mentality. So how do you shift the mindset?
Student Voice in the Collection
Do you include student voice in your collection? If not, you are missing out on the #1 way to engage your students in reading. Student requests, surveys, feedback, daily conversations, and our Student Library Advisory Board guide my collection development throughout the year. Yes, I still purchase award winners, books for book clubs, and examine needed books to fill gaps in our collection, but our student requests fill the majority of our book purchases. When students know their voices are heard, they feel a part of something more - a community who cares about them. Reading naturally happens when you listen to what your patrons need. The additional benefits of serving student's need for belonging makes this even more important.
Inclusive Texts
Ebooks help students tackle tough topics they may be too shy, embarassed, or scared to ask about or checkout in a physical format. We offer digital reading that feature heavy subjects including police brutality, white privilege, racism, suicide, abuse, school shootings, life-threatening diseases and LGBTQ+ rights. As a school librarian, equitable access and student privacy are extremely important. Ebooks allow for both and our students often feel more comfortable seeking out information this way.
We have a display with a QR code on bookmarks for tough topics that link to collections for students to pick up too. 
Advertising
Students don’t know, until they know. Using visual displays coupled with QR codes to alert students of all the great titles we have in Sora has helped in building a culture of digital reading. For instant gratification, we advertise right on the shelves. If the physical book is not here, we want students to know we are thinking of their needs with our digital collection.
When a student isn’t sure what to read, we help them to decide with BookFlix (our spin on the Netflix platform, template detailed here). BookFlix shows available print and digital books based on students’ favorite reads, as recommended by our Student Library Advisory Board. Made up of students grades 6-8, the advisory board helps add new books and change out books each month to keep recommendations fresh! I also display ebooks all over the school with the use of school monitors, our morning news show, on social media, school newsletters, and bulletin boards. When I share physical books, I also share digital books so that there is not a stigma of what reading medium we choose. It's in their faces every day as they are in the lunch room, in the hallways, in the morning news, etc. When I share what I read with students, I share a mix of how I read with physical and digital books on a display outside the library as well. When I've read an ebook or audiobook, I link it with a QR code so students can access it easily.
How are you designing and implementing book tastings this year?
To keep our students and staff safe this year, I took it all online with virtual book tastings! How does it work? I choose 4 books per genre. Then I link each book to our Sora ebooks. Students read the description, read the first few pages using the “read sample” feature. At the end of the lesson, students respond using Flipgrid with their thoughts on the books and genres so I can do a follow up readers advisory. It’s been so wonderful hosting these book tastings because it almost feels like normal - connecting with students and sharing awesome books. I put the link to my template below for FREE. Go check it out! If you do use the template and share, please make sure to include my attribution. Thank you! <<Make your own>> This year, more than ever before, educators - teachers, librarians, support staff - have been going above and beyond to take care of our students and each other. We have been trying to make the most of a hard situation. While I am proud of the work we have been doing, I am worried about our teachers more than ever! We must remember to take time for ourselves, which is easier said than done. Make it your goal as you move into the holiday break and the new year to do something just for you every day, whether it's reading a page of your book, watching guilty tv shows, exercising, or trying something crafty. Here are some tips to get you started:
 2020 has been a year of growth and reflection while also being painful and disheartening at times. A pandemic will do that to people, I suppose. This roller coaster of a year has allowed me to be part of a new age in education. I have been able to support and witness our teachers develop renewed confidence in teaching with technology or trying activities in the classroom they previously would not have tried. It has also allowed me to see some of the best educators I know shrink because of stress and time.
Education is at a precipice in which we can transform education with new, engaging possibilities or continue to strip away student choice, exploration, and creativity to meet bare minimum expectations. I have seen policies enacted within classrooms and districts which have made teaching in the modern age more difficult than ever before. In addition to these policies, our educators are working harder than ever before while also fearing for theirs and loved ones safety. It's no wonder our students and teachers are feeling tired, overworked, apathetic, or burnt out. However, I believe myself to be a "champion of possibilities" as my dear friend Wendy Cope says. I believe the more we intentionally develop opportunities for student agency, the less burn out we will feel and the more our students will benefit. It's a win, win. Student agency is a crucial component to include in the education culture of any classroom or school. Agency references the power to make choices and ownership of learning. Including activities for choice and voice through menu boards is an example, but it's so much more than that. How are we embedding student agency into the culture of the classroom or the school - whether in person or virtually? How are we including activities that are relevant to our students, provide authentic audiences, are driven by student interests and inquiry, and initiated by the students? If we want our students engaged, we need to be intentional in our lesson design to allow our students to reach their full potential. Education seems to be done to students rather than developed with or alongside them. You may have heard me discuss at length the need to consider Maslow's Hierarchy within our inclusion of SEL in the library or school culture (if not, listen here or here). Students need to be seen, heard, and nurtured for them to achieve their optimal level of learning. If students do not feel like they belong or are a part of something, they may be disengaged, apathetic, or even misbehave in class to avoid learning. They may also just be complacent in their situation without reaching their full potential. Both are harmful. The most seemless way to include student agency is through creative agency. We need to begin thinking about creative agency as a means of student empowerment. When students have greater ownership of the creative process through making or creating, learning becomes more relevant and engaging. This creative agency supports the development of critical skills and literacies needed for full engagement in our digital world, and it creates epic opportunities to demonstrate achievement of standards. Creating (think: graphics, videos, drawing, coding, choreographing, etc.) requires us to use a complex assemblage of skills that celebrate and encourage out of the box thinking to helps students connect with their learning in deeper ways. Not only that, sharing creations with others makes us consider audience, a crucial aspect of life beyond the classroom. Providing authentic audiences can lead to powerful, profound connections with peers, colleagues, communities, and families. If you'd like to start moving towards incorporating student agency more in your classroom, especially by including creative agency, please consider collaborating with your school library media specialist. We love to help and have been incorporating creative agency in our MakerSpaces for quite some time! Living in Georgia, we do not often see the beauty of snow. However, this weekend brought snow flurries and it had me craving all the books with snow! These books make want to snuggle up with a cup of delicious hot cocoa, my fluffy blanket, and snuggle into my reading chair to read for hours. |
Martha BongiornoMS Librarian | @glma 
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